So I’ve been a regular reader of Canadian Business magazine for a while now. In fact, I currently have an annual subscription. I read through each issue, and then I bring them in to my office and leave them in a communal reading area for my colleagues (I work full-time at a high-tech company). They tend to get picked up quickly and I see them making the rounds into different cubicles.

But lately, I’ve started to feel too embarrassed to bring in my issues of Canadian Business. I think it likely started with the Lululemon issue. To promote the feature article on this fabulous Canadian success story, the editors used this image on the cover (image credit: Canadian Business, photographer KC Armstrong):

Both Stella (my 9-year-old) and Hubby laughed at this butt front and centre on my magazine cover. I knew then that I would not be bringing this issue into the office, with my name on its label. I would feel silly … like I’d just brought in a Cosmo magazine for my business colleagues to read. (Besides, the more I looked at this cover image, the more it irked me. It wasn’t even a realistic female butt. It looks like it has been photo-shopped to bizarre proportions. Look at the top, where the skin is … see how much the waist narrows in before it gets cut off? It’s a strange image. And nothing I would have associated with business.)

But I shrugged it off. Whatever; it’s just one issue. I read it, then tossed it in my recycle bin rather than passing it on for others to read.

And then the September 12 issue arrived, with this cover, proclaiming “MEET YOUR NEXT BOSS”:

Haha! I thought, unless I plan on working at an escort agency a radically different workplace, this is certainly not going to be MY next boss!

As it turns out, this is a photo of Shahrzad Rafati, who is the founder and CEO of a Vancouver-based company by the name of BroadbandTV. I have never worked with anyone in an office environment that wears a skin-tight dress, bra-less with top of breasts exposed, topped with sky-high peep-toe heels. Have you? I can’t see how it’s practical corporate attire. Most bosses work long hours and your back sure would hurt after 11 hours in those shoes!

You guessed it: another issue that went straight into the recycling bin rather than to my office.

I started to wonder if I would bother renewing my subscription. And I started to think that maybe Canadian Business was trying to appeal only to male readers, and didn’t want to bother attracting the purchasing power of the female demographic.

Yesterday, my September 26 issue arrived. This time, the title screamed: ‘WHY THE BOSS ISN’T HAPPY YOU’RE HAVING A BABY.” Please, like this is news. Every woman who’s ever walked into her boss’ office after her 12-week ultrasound knows that she’s walking in on egg shells. I can see both sides of this situation very clearly. But Canadian Business wrote about only one side — the boss (who, according to Canadian Business‘ own stats is twice as likely to be male).

As an example of the opinions expressed in the article, this quote was used in a call-out:

“And then sometimes toward the end of the mat leave, [the new parent] decides not to come back. You feel the crafters of the mat-leave legislation set you up as a patsy.”

I’m not disagreeing with this person. This kind of situation does leave a business scrambling. I know women who have chosen to stay home at the end of a maternity leave and broke it to their employer shortly before they were scheduled to come back. But I also know far more women who met with their employer shortly before they were scheduled to come back and found out that their role had been substantially changed in their absence or that the employer was unwilling to consider flexible or part-time hours. Only after this discussion did they tender their resignation. And often, not to stay home, but to go to another employer. In presenting only the employer’s view, I wondered again if Canadian Business actually wanted me as a subscriber.

But the final nail in the coffin was when I flipped to read the Editor’s Letter (you can read it in full online here) in this same issue. In it, James Cowan, Interim Editor-in-Chief, chose to respond to an anonymous letter that expressed disappointment in the “Meet Your Next Boss” cover. I wasn’t surprised in the least that a complaint was received about this cover choice; I’m only surprised that only one was received. Cowan uses a snickering tone that I admit I find amusing in Vanity Fair‘s Letters Section, but find a tad insulting in this situation. Not to mention the number of words he wastes pointing out that the letter was anonymous — who cares? Can’t someone write an anonymous letter to a magazine? (Besides, not everyone can afford to have their name printed publicly without, rightly or wrongly, recrimination from the company that issues their pay cheque.)

Anyways, back to the letter. The letter-writer had stated:

“What a disappointment to see that Canadian Business magazine made the decision to feature a highly suggestive and sexualized photograph of a woman …”

Cowan counters that image was not hypersexualized and notes that it was Rafati herself who chose her outfit, not Canadian Business. Okay, fair enough. If this is what Rafati actually wears to corporate meetings, so be it. But I’d love to know if a man has ever showed up for a Canadian Business photoshoot with his shirt half un-buttoned — did they advise him to close up a couple of buttons? Or did they go ahead and put his wash-board stomach on the cover to help sell a few more issues?

Further, he notes that beyond Rafati’s attractive physical appearance, the cover is compelling because of:

“…the confidence she exuded in the way she stood, her even stare and her clear sense of self. This wasn’t a pin-up girl. This was a successful woman who was impossible to ignore.”

Again, fair enough. She does have a confident stance on the cover. And here is her stance in the interior spread of the magazine:

On the left-hand page is Sammie Kennedy, the founder of Booty Camp Fitness, standing confidently with a broad smile. And on the right is Rafati, knees coyly turned in together, lips pursed. Which woman exudes more confidence to you? I’d say Kennedy. And which woman do you think will sell more magazines? Yep, Rafati.

Or at least this is what Cowan turns his point on — that Rafati grabs attention and gets people to buy the magazine.

“We’ll concede your point this much: we put an attractive woman on the cover. We’re undeniably interested in catching a reader’s eye, just like all publications. And one method to cut through the newstand clutter — to get your attention as you wait in line at the drugstore — is through a striking image.”

And further, that he is doing the business world (and implicitly, women in particular) a service by grabbing readership attention with this story. It highlights the success of women in business, which in turn serves to help address the “woeful imbalance” of males and females in Canadian leadership positions. He closes with:

“We put this story in our magazine because it matters. We put Rafati on our cover because we wanted readers to pay attention.”

Yes, shout it, brother! That sounds so good.

But I’m not buying it.

It’s spin. In fact, it seems remarkably similar to the PR campaign that World’s Finest Chocolate is using at the moment, called “Think Big, Eat Smart.” They are creating the most enormous chocolate bar — a world-record breaking chocolate bar — so that they can get kids’ attention and then talk to them about portion control and healthy eating. Huh? Yes, that’s right, a chocolate bar company is not actually trying to sell more chocolate bars, it’s trying to help kids eat healthy.

We both know that the chocolate bar company is trying to sell more chocolate. But it’s doubtful this tactic will meet either goal: to teach kids how to eat healthy or sell more of their chocolate bars. The whole thing just seems kind of pointless. Or at least, confusing.

So, Canadian Business, I guess that’s how I’m feeling about our relationship right now too: confused. So confused that, if you’ll excuse this old break-up cliche, I need to “take a break.”

In the March issue of Scholastic’s Parent & Child magazine, you’ll find an article inspired by a blog post of the old fashioned party games we put on for Stella’s birthday!

It’s a fabulous magazine and I feel really honoured to get a few of my words into ink for such a top-notch publication. So if it’s in your home or you see it on the news stand …. check me out on page 12!

This life with young children, and work, and household maintenance … it really does feel like a hamster wheel sometimes, doesn’t it? Everyone TALKS about how to achieve balance, but I’m pretty sceptical about it being even possible. So, for now, I just keep running. It’s not so bad once you accept that you are indeed a scattered mom and that this is just simply life.

For today though, I’m home from work because my little guy spiked a fever in the middle of the night and he’s out of sorts. And the sleep deprivation that comes with caring for a sick toddler through the night is hanging heavily on me, so forgive me for lacking any original thoughts or passionate topics to raise with you … but, I do have something I’d really like to share.

It’s something I read last night in the issue of Expore magazine that just arrived in the mail yesterday. It’s a special edition that features the best stories from the past 30 years and it’s just chock full of ultra-great writing. But seeing how many of us have been trying to undertake the “camping experience” with our kids, this particular piece really resonated.

Are We There Yet?
By Bruce Ramsay
Originally published in the July/August 2005 issue of Explore and reprinted for this special edition

The breathless cliche goes something like this: to take children into the woods is to experience the wonder of all that surrounds us. But the truth is that yarding half-pints into the woods offers a frustration-to-bliss ratio closer to golf, or more likely, the carnal act that got you into trouble in the first place. So why do I take my kids?

Partly because I want them to have an image of me that includes mountains and streams. Partly because kids — unlike adults, who have been brainwashed by the positive affirmation industry — understand that YES, it is the destination, NOT the journey dammit. Partly because kids, until they hit 10, will laugh at most of your jokes, humble you by making you carry their baby dolls and stuffies past other hikers, hug trees without political intentions, shamelessly tell fantastic tales that have no basis in reality, don’t care how much you spent on your boots, can be scared by the simplest of ghost stories, drool mercilessly on your hat during shoulder rides, pull on your ears from their backpack, and understand the spiritual importance of hot chocolate.

But ultimately, the best reason for taking kids was revealed to me a few years back while hiking up Ha Ling Peak with my then 18-month-old daughter. As we stopped for a snack, we were passed by a man being led up the mountain by his two teenagers. As he paused to say hello to my daughter, he said, “That’s how we started years ago, and the secret is that when you take them as youngsters, someday down the road they will ask you to join them.”

Which is maybe why I laugh loudest these days when my kids pester me with , “Are we there yet?”

Did you enjoy this? I loved it and I think, if I had to pick my fave twist of words, I’d say it was the part about hot chocolate being a spiritual experience! You?

The country’s best-paid CEOs earned an average of $6.6 million in 2009, according to a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The average salary fell from $7.3 million in 2008, but is still far above the typical Canadian income of $42,9888.

And … wait for it ….

By 2:30 p.m. on the first working day of the year, the CEOs had already earned that amount.

Yep, you read that right. By 2:30 pm on the first day, a CEO had earned an average Canadian’s entire year’s salary.

(What? You didn’t know I had a cruel sense of humour … okay, now you do.)  

Then last night, I happened to read an article on this very subject. Titled ‘When life goes U-shaped,” and published in the October issue of Maclean’s, it cites a study of more than 2 million people in 72 countries that confirmed that it is a common phenomenon to be hit a low-point in middle age.

In fact, the research shows that 40 is prime time for North American women to be sliding right into this slump. And I just turned 39 over the Thanksgiving weekend. Greeeeat.

The “U” refers to the happiness before and after middle-age. Which, sure, is interesting … but I’m middle-aged and I’m not finding it all that comforting to know that eventually I will hit the up-turn. I want to do something now! I’m itchy, darn it all!

In May, these were the things I told you I was doing in a desperate itch-scratching attempt:

Now, six months later, I have enacted some of the above, but I’m still itchy. In fact, just looking at this list makes me laugh because instead of comtemplating the downtown real estate market, I’m contemplating the exact opposite — a larger home in the burbs. It just goes to show that perhaps this is an itch that cannot be scratched.

It might just be a feeling I need to live with for a while. I think Finola hit the nail on the head when she commented back in May:

I think these years of two parents working, bringing up kids, carrying mortgages and car payments, and having most spare moments filled with chores and tasks take a toll. For me I think I just need to ride out a couple of more years, and maybe I will feel more myself again.

And I think it also has to do with having something to look forward to. I always like to have something to look ahead to, and somehow, mortgage payments just aren’t cutting it.

My solution? I’m going to do a small change. I am going to make time for my friendships. Hanging out with other people my age, going through the same feelings and experiences and being able to laugh about it all really does make me feel so much lighter.

And on that note, I need to run out — I’ve got a coffee date with a friend.

The article I was reading had initially intrigued me because envy isn’t a common topic for Harvard Business Review, or business research in general for that matter. Also, I work in the area of organizational change management and I wondered if envy played a role in resistance to new ideas.

The authors, Tanya Menon and Leigh Thompson, present some very interesting ways in which envy does indeed affect a company’s performance and its employees receptiveness to change. But more helpfully, they also offer concrete steps to take in order to overcome envy’s damaging side effects, both as an individual but also as a team leader.

I think it’s no surprise to any of us that envy is not something one wants. It’s an unpleasant feeling and as Andrea states in her post:

It’s 40 years later, in 2009. Writers travelled from far and wide to attend Wordstock, at Ryerson University. They came to appreciate the wisdom and experience of amazing traditional and new media journalists. They drank lots of coffee. It was a good time.

So that’s where and why I was in Toronto on Saturday. I went to school and learned from the best of the best:

Robb Montgomery gave a two-hour opening seminar to all of us. I couldn’t take down notes fast enough! He had so much to share about new media and the tools to make it happen. Robb’s got a really nice way about him. You just want to catch up with him later and have a beer. If I start going on about Delicious, embedr, and bit.ly, you have him to blame.

Next, there were break-out sessions. I picked one with Don Gibb, a journalism veteran and retired Ryerson prof. He also acts as a writing coach to the Globe & Mail staff. This man was born to teach — he is just so good at getting everyone involved, and we all learned and shared a great deal about how to craft a feature article. A good one, that is.

Kim Pittaway was the presenter at my next chosen break-out session. She was slotted to give guidance on when and how to slip into first-person narrative. Truth be told, I really wasn’t so much interested in the topic as I was the speaker. When Kim was editor of Chatelaine, all sorts of stuff went down (which you can read about here and here), and to me she sounded very cool. So I went to see her. And she was cool.

After dinner, he’ll look longingly at some peaches he picked up that day at the store. He’ll pick one up, roll it around in his hand, maybe even give it a sniff. Then he’ll sink his teeth into it.

“Ugh,” he’ll pronounce, then put it down and push it aside in disgust. “It looked so good,” he’ll say, ”but it’s just pulpy inside. No flavour, terrible texture.” The thing with him is that he’s a perpetual optimist and he’ll be just as hopeful for a juicy peach next time he buys one from the store. And so it goes.

I have always attributed this disappointment of his to the difference between eating a fruit right off of a tree to eating one that’s had to travel goodness knows how many kilometres in a truck. You see, he grew up on a fruit farm in Australia.

The September/October issue of Mother Jones magazine gave me some further food for thought on this issue. Science and environmental journalist Heather Smith explains that today’s hybrid crops “are often bred for size and color, not nutrients.” Her article “Looks Great, Less Filling,” then goes on to compare the nutrient value of fruits and vegetables from the 1950s to today’s counterparts. It’s pretty alarming, really. Or at least interesting.

For instance, according to Mother Jones and USDA data, today’s broccoli offers 52% less vitamin A, 60% less calcium, and 27% less iron. And a honey dew mellow provides 68% less calcium and an astounding 84% less iron. 84% less. Wow, that’s some serious change.

With this kind of radical change in nutrients, can one deduce that there would also be a change in taste? Perhaps that’s why today’s peach doesn’t taste as peachy as it did when my husband was a boy.

Her article “Is my epidermis showing?” reads a bit like a sad commentary on modern family life. When her husband arrives home after work, she’s on pins and needles wondering if he is going to notice. Instead:

He comes in the door, calls hello and asks if there is any dinner left. I approach, smile and say I made a lovely dinner and there’s plenty left for him.

“Great. Thanks.” He brushes past me and sits with his dinner and the newspaper. Good. I guess.

 Huh? That’s the extent of their interaction? It’s no wonder then that he doesn’t notice her face. He probably wouldn’t notice if she got an entire face-lift done!

But as much as I would like to distance myself from this writer (who is going by the pyseudonym “Ivana Filler” – LOL), I have to wonder … would my husband actually notice if I got a filler? What do you think — would yours?